


make sweet my hive

by novembersmith



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Yuleporn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 03:05:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8951416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novembersmith/pseuds/novembersmith
Summary: This may be the single worst moment of Lewis Nixon’s life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Laliandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laliandra/gifts).



> Laliandra, I had intended to write some fake-dating for you, but somehow this story happened instead?? ANYWAY, I hope you enjoy and have a very merry yuletide! Title cribbed from a frankly soppy Donne poem, and betas to be thanked effusively after reveal.
> 
> ETA: Apparently I FORGOT HOW TO SUMMARY. Sorry about that!

This may be the single worst moment of Lewis Nixon’s life.

Well, no. Technically not. He has driven through mud and sand and blood, he has lain awake at night next to a wife and seen on her face the startling realization that he did not love her, he has watched men die and lost his dog. All those things are worse; he knows this, intellectually, but at this moment Richard Winters is leaning into their mark with a smile, his hand on their upper thigh. Then he noses along the line of the rat bastard’s jaw. Said rat bastard shudders and sighs, eyes all pupil, his panting audible on the mic clipped inside Dick’s collar.  
  
Dick pulls back and smiles bashfully down at his hands, flustered and overcome. “I don’t usually do this,” he confesses, and the mark eats it up with a spoon, falls all over himself trying to get Dick back close again.  
  
This is the worst damn night in the history of all the nights of all the world.  
  
“You’ve been holding out on me, Winters,” he says brightly into the earpiece and hears Dick hum back, pleased and proud. Lew can tell because he knows the tone of it, knows Dick so well that it makes him want to saunter to the other side of the bar, order a bottle of their finest, pound it, fling himself into Dick’s lap. Makes him want to forget the case, forget that apparently Dick has actual game he’s been hiding all these years and has never bothered to show Lew. Some spy he is.

He keeps talking anyway. “So you’re the honeypot from now on, and I’ll be the staid Quaker vinegar, how’s that sound?”  
  
“Suits me fine,” Dick says in a low rasp, ostensibly in response to the idiot mark offering to bring him upstairs for some privacy. They walk past Lew to the stairs, and Lew lets his eyes flick over, casually leering, just your average horny scumbag and not at all a covert spy op, here. Jesus, the sight of Dick’s hand in that scumbag’s slimy grip, their skin touching, makes Lew yearn for bleach, for steel wool, to bundle Dick into a shower and scrub him pink and healthy again.

But Dick stretches idly, casually, as he’s headed up the stairs, and that’s the ‘all clear’ sign he’s flashing, clear as day. So everything must be alright. Technically. It’s not alright in Lew’s head, but then, it never is.  
  
Pay attention, Nixon, he orders himself. This is the tricky bit, the part where Dick has to plant the bug in the backroom and extricate himself without raising an alarm. Don’t think about Dick with a few drinks in him, pliant and sweet, nuzzling, husky-voiced, because it is all a _lie_. Dick is just doing a job right now, however loose and easy and deliciously debauchable he looks. It’s only, he might be doing the job and doing it damned well, but Lew knows he can’t enjoy it, whereas Lew doesn't give a damn who paws him. He could do this part of the job in his sleep, has done before – he plays the lush easily, it should be _his_ slutty ass out there now, rubbing on an idiot mark and getting their foot in his door, it should have been Dick watching serene and untouched from a distance, steady and cool-eyed at his back. But no. No, not tonight.

Fate, fortuna, destiny, God – what-have-you, whatever you call it, Lew’s not sure it exists, but if it does, it apparently loves to fuck with him.  
  
After his tour ended and he’d bid the military and the government a hearty fuck-off, Lew still had all these horseshit commendations for intelligence. It seemed natural to start snooping around stateside, to fight a winnable war on a smaller scale instead of drinking his days away. He’d always liked Sam Spade – he figured a private detective or something, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, smirks, dames, hard knocks, cases with a start and a finish. Nothing like the war or the military at all.  
  
He likes to joke no one would have hired him without Dick to make it respectable. In truth, he’d been mildly surprised Dick had followed him here, especially given all the private dick jokes he’d made while asking him. He’d been mildly surprised to have found Dick in the war in the first place – Dick didn’t seem the type to enlist, even if he was about the best damned leader of men the military had ever accidentally acquired. Dick had quietly explained, one long cold night in a Humvee, both of them gritty and miserable with sand blowing through the patched pieces, that he’d been a believer in civic duty, making the world a better place. Don’t laugh, he’d added belatedly, ruefully.

On anyone else, this would have sounded complete horseshit, but it rang sincere as church bells in Dick’s voice, and broke Lew’s heart all the more, because he was watching this war wear down Dick’s faith in the world, in their country, in anything and everything.

Huh, Lew had said into the solemn silence that followed. Well, my ex-wife took my dog, so I figured I might as well jump out a plane, and had thought, _son of a bitch, I’ve screwed myself again_ when Dick laughed, startled and loud, bright in the darkness.  
  
Now they’re out of the army, out of the war but still side by side, partners, shoring the other up when one falls flat. Lew funds the operation entire – he’s got the money for it, and delights in getting backend CIA gadgets and abandoned DoD toys from his military contacts, classy suits for disguises, the works. He’s not getting paid for any of this, not directly – but he’s made investments, and they’re gathering interest. He’s not worried about money, anyway.

Dick’s paycheck comes out of whatever bills actually get paid them for their services, which Lew furtively pads as best he can and as much as Dick can let himself pretend he doesn’t know about. Mostly they take charity cases: a couple missing dogs and runaway wealthy teens, sure, those pay okay, but more often they’re hunting down missing persons that have fallen between the cracks, and illegal immigrants and sex workers don’t really have extra cash handy to pay them with – more often Dick winds up feeding _them_ , when the case is done.

He thinks eventually Dick’s going to leave him for law school, something that offers a more practical, concrete career, but for now he’s here, helping Lew in this crazy cockamamie scheme, like he believes in it, in him.

So Lew noses around back alleys, charms bartenders and bouncers, weasels out descriptions, uncovers the sordid e-histories: all the dirty work he’d done in Iraq and Afghanistan, with less Arabic and Kurdish and more emojis.

And Dick, Dick’s the muscle, Lew likes to say, which makes anyone who hadn’t seen the man coldcock a bouncer laugh, but all their fellow veterans of Easy company nod respectfully. Lew is just playing at a hero in his new life’s story; Dick actually _is_ one.

And calm and quiet badassery aside, Dick is the one who makes them look trustworthy, who talks to the police or the feds when it needs done (unless what they need done is somewhat shady, in which case the responsibility reverts to Lew and his network of less-than-reputability). He somehow gets all the fiddly bits of paperwork done, pages through old newspaper files and ancient microfiche, researches the boring stuff that make cases complete, bathed late into the night with blue computer light that washes out his freckles and makes him squint –

“You’ll get crow’s feet, reading that close to the screen,” Lew had told him loftily, their first month in the office. He’d kicked back in his chair, hat tipped over his head to make him look like Bogart, scrolling through endless Facebook photos of probable drug deals on his phone. “Your chair’s about to tip,” Dick had muttered, chewing his lower lip, and stole his coffee, and smiled over the rim when the rug went out from under Lew and his hat went flying.

They set their own hours, took their own cases – Dick kept them from being hired by anyone too low-life, and Lew managed to refrain from horribly ruining everything too often with black market hoarding of high quality booze. If the world was still at war, it was far away. If Lew still ached, if the adrenaline of combat still lingered, if Dick was both too close and too far, well, that was what the booze was for, and somehow their little company is still afloat.  
  
But for some rotten reason, three years into the job, came this day when every little thing seemed to go wrong, and their routine got fragged into oblivion, all shrapnel and bystander casualties.

Lew woke late to his hot water heater on the fritz, followed by cold shower, rain, running late, took a taxi to the office, got in a fucking fender bender, the fucking other driver with an unregistered gun got impatient enough to try shooting his way out of it, taking them both to the local unimpressed precinct, who had no interest in a private detective horning in on their turf again, more fucking _rain_ – at any rate, Lew had been late for ‘accidentally’ meeting their mark, and Dick, like he always did, stepped up.

Nice bar, real classy, so the first problem – it was already a FUBAR situation, code red, mayday, fucking _retreat_  – was that Dick was wearing the suit. Dove gray, tailored, the one Lew wheedled him into and only got away with buying for him because Dick has no idea what it cost. He’s a tall drink of cool water and he makes the rest of the bar crowd look overdone, sleazy. The suit makes Lew crazy on a good day, even though it’s his own fault for buying it.

And this is not a good day.  
  
At first it’d almost seemed like it should be funny – Dick Winters, on the prowl. Theoretically it was hysterical. Watch out, ladies, a transplant from 19th century Amish land! But Dick somehow – it wasn’t funny. This was Dick with two buttons undone, loosened, softened, in a way Lew had only seen late at night, in the hush of a closed car. _That’s mine_ , Lew had thought, staggered and oddly betrayed, when he’d finally made it inside and spotted his partner in his place at the end of the bar, tucked in the corner with a goddamn drink in his hand.  
  
Then Lew got to watch as Dick drove the poor fucker next to him mad with the taste of intimacy, the hint of a suggestion that there might be more coming – like he might be corruptible, touchable. It’s the last ten years Dick had spent with Lew, distilled and concentrated into single night. Only without Lew in the picture.  
  
Lew had gotten so fucking good at ignoring each casual touch, telling himself it wasn’t deliberate, Dick didn’t know what he was doing to him when he fixed Lew’s tie, or sat too close on his desk, or dropped his head to Lew’s shoulder after a long stake-out. But then he was using those little touches, ramping them up, pulling the mark in.

And now they’re upstairs.

In the earpiece now, there’s clothing rustling, and the sound of kissing. This toad has gotten where Lew never has and never will and there’s a slight chance Lew might very shortly lose his entire shit and destroy the bar. He’s contemplating picking up the stool he’s sitting on and hurling it into the mirror, his reflection staring back at him.

“You know, you’re _awfully_ good at this seduction thing,” he rasps accusingly into the mic in his sleeve without thinking, and washes out the taste of immediate regret with a swig of bourbon. Drinking on the job was invented for this night, he thinks, and presses the cool glass to his cheek, though he really needs to leave maybe half of this bourbon in the cup – Dick sounds like he’s got control of the situation, is still playing the coy debutante unsure he’s ready for his first gay debauching, but he might need back up, extraction. Lew’s not even buzzed on what’s already in his bloodstream, but Dick gets so fussy about him operating firearms whilst imbibing.

He smiles at the bartender, who’s eyeing the disheveled man rambling to himself with understandable concern. Whoops.  
  
“Long day, wife’s cheating on me, think I might be gay,” he explains, with manic cheer, and is immeasurably heartened when the bartender’s face softens and he tops up the glass on the house. Lew’s touched. He still might wind up arresting the guy later, if he was mixed up in it, but hey. So long as it’s not drugged again, like that one time they don’t talk about, booze is booze.  
  
And he’s gonna need more of it if he keeps listening to this guy trying to coax his hand into Dick’s trousers, _baby, you look so good, lemme show you what a man can do._  Dick Winters is more a man than this establishment has ever seen, and Christ almighty, it’s gotta have been long enough to slap a damn bug to the bottom of a chair. Who cares if it’s not, Lew cannot listen to this, he is _pulling the plug._  
  
“You need a hand getting out of there or are you having too much fun?” he inquires when the bartender’s back is turned.  
  
“Help me out,” Dick responds immediately, awkward in the most endearing way. “I’ve never done this before.”  
  
Jesus, wrong thing to say, that poor sap Dick’s got must be about to cream his damn pants.  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re a natural,” Lew says, with forced cheer, and then winces when Dick gives that little concerned huff, the one he knows way too well. He gets out the phone and starts composing a barrage of betrayed texts and unanswered calls from Dick’s betrayed and devastated fiancee, ignoring how ironically apropos it feels. “Easiest exit,” he instructs quietly, pressing send. “Your honey knows where you are and is on the way, you gotta run before she gets here and makes a scene.”  
  
He’s listening intently to see if stronger measures are called for – next step is fire alarm, or maybe Lew bursting up there with a fire extinguisher, or better yet a fire axe, but Dick’s already stammering guilty apologies, the guy is whining, Dick’s getting sterner, colder, and finally he comes storming out, alone. Lew fiddles with his phone, finds the bug on his network with ease, already broadcasting, and it should let him piggyback onto their wifi, too. Halle-fucking-lujah. Give them a day of this and the case should be closed.  
  
He takes another swallow of bourbon, feels it go down less smooth than usual as he watches Dick cross the room. He’s mussed and red-lipped and looks frankly edible, aside from the expression on his face.  
  
“Leaving so soon, handsome?” Lew says, leaning back as Dick brushes past him for the door, and feels Dick automatically catch him before the stool can tip. “Hey, sailor, I’ve had a bad day, show me a good time.”  
  
" _You’ve_ had a bad day,” Dick states, dryer than gin, raising an eyebrow, and Lew smiles helplessly at him, even as his blood boils a little to see Dick’s hair mussed, his skin flushed and god have fucking mercy, a hickey on his pale neck.  
  
“Buy you a drink, tell you all about it,” Lew wheedles, and then sighs and lets go. “Out of practice picking up, I’ve lost my touch,” he gripes to the interested bartender, watching as Dick makes his stiff way out of the bar and out into the damp night. “Hey, one for the road?”  
  
By the time he makes it to the car, Dick’s hair is already combed back in place. If it wasn’t for the way he was slumped in the seat, and arm over his eyes, or the purpling bruise on his neck, smudged dark like lipstick, it might never have happened at all.

“I,” he announces, flinging himself into the passenger seat with great aplomb, “am ready to blow this joint.” He flicks a glance over; Dick still isn’t looking at him.

“That was terrible,” Dick says, muffled. He’s bright red, and seems like maybe he’s planning never to look at Lew ever again. Which, fair, Lew’s not sure he’s ready to meet Dick’s eyes, either – now that Dick’s out and safe, and the job is done, jealousy is this enormous thing in him, clawing up his throat, irrational and possessive and _insane_ . Dick’s not into men, or if he is, definitely not _that_ man. Definitely not Lew, either, but he’s got to be up on a possible go-fer for a probable human trafficker, so he needs to dial it the fuck back.

And yet, and still, he’s wrestling with the need to pin Dick to the car door and reassert his claim on Dick’s person. Like he has one. Shut up, you stupid organ, he mentally commands his chest, and slaps on a grin.

“I’ve never been so proud of you,” Lew lies, and salutes him with the flask he’s just fumbled out of the emergency stealth panel in the glove compartment. “My baby, all grown up and seducing scumbag criminals for great justice. How was his breath?”

“Give me that,” Dick says, dropping his arm from his face, and to Lew’s surprise he doesn’t tuck the flask away, but takes a long swallow from it, coughing a little after. “Horrible,” he answers finally, “It was horrible. I’m sorry.”

It takes a second for the words to sink in, because he’s too busy watching Dick’s throat work, seeing that damn bitemark all over again.

“Sorry? For… drinking?” Lew guesses, genuinely boggled what Dick has to be sorry for, when the case is closed, or good enough. He picked up Lew’s slack ass yet again and got the job done; there’s nothing to apologize for, unless he’s apologizing for being responsible for Lew’s Worst End To An Already Bad Day Ever. Which seems unlikely. Dick apologizes to basically everyone for anything, especially when it’s not his fault, but he hardly ever apologizes to Lew. Normally, Lew likes that, likes that Dick steals his coffee without asking, and laughs at him when he over-balances his chair.

“I don’t think I did a great job,” Dick says, staring out the windshield, still speckled with the earlier rain. “I nearly sucker-punched him, at the end, when he wouldn’t let go of my – anyway. He seemed like maybe he was getting suspicious. I don’t know how you do it, Lew.”

Wouldn’t let go of – "Well, if they find the bug, we can always burn the building down! Arson is a highly underrated solution to the problem of criminal enterprise, I’ve always thought,” Lew says brightly, and feels something loosen inside him when Dick laughs a little, shaking his head. “And hey, from what I saw and heard you did a great job. Too great a job, if he was that into you. Where’d you get those moves from, slick?”

“Moves?” Dick’s at least looking at him now, cheeks pink from the shot of whiskey he just took, or from embarrassment, or both. “I just, I mostly pretended he was you, that I was talking to you, and it – didn’t work very well. I had no idea what I was doing.”

Lew’s brain is pretty great  –  he’s not a good person, he’s got all manner of vice and foible and flaw, but processing and storing information, analyzing patterns, drawing conclusions – it’s kind of his thing. But his brain has no idea what to do with this new intelligence; all it’s producing is a high-pitched kettle sound.

“Pretended he was me,” he parrots, loosening his tie. Maybe more oxygen will help.

“Yeah, uh. I don’t have a lot of experience, otherwise. Though he seemed to like that part,” Dick says, a little darkly.

“You don’t talk to me like that, though,” Lew says. “All flirty, I mean. I think I would have noticed.”

Dick stares at him for a long moment, and Lew stares back. They’ve done hundreds of hours of stake-outs in this car, even more in Iraq in the Humvee, and Lew’s gotten to know their silences pretty fucking well. This one speaks volumes.

“Oh my god,” he breathes. “Jesus, okay, fuck, fire me as a detective.”

“Lew?” Dick says, voice rising a little on the end.

“Do it again, I’m an idiot, just – do it with me. Talk to me. Say anything.” He has to ask for it before he writes it off as a post-terrible-day-wishful-daydream. Dick stares at him, and then slides over a little in the bucket seat, licking his lips. He leans in and undoes Lew’s tie the rest of the way.

“This is mine,” he says, voice a little rough as he slowly pulls it out from Lew’s collar. And son of a bitch, it is, he’d stolen it the last time he’d crashed at Dick’s place pulling an all-nighter. He’d stolen a shirt, too, a dirty one, that smelled like too much coffee and 3AM sweat and Old Spice, because Dick is ridiculous, and it’s still under Lew’s pillow. “You’re a damn thief.”

His fingers brush Lew’s throat, and then he’s sitting back, and he’s done that before, taken Lew’s tie off for him, or tied it better, or brushed his hair away from his forehead, or sighed and done Lew’s eyeliner, for that one dance club gig. He’s done all of this before, just like this, with just that voice but Lew’s suddenly seeing it so differently it makes his head spin. He’s light-headed as he puts out a hand and catches Dick’s tie, tugging him gently back in. Dick comes easily, pupils blown huge.

“All of it’s yours,” he says, and keeps pulling until Dick’s almost in his lap. “It’s been yours for years.”

“What a damn line,” Dick says, but his eyes are lit up, his face bright. “That work on all the girls and boys?”

“You tell me,” Lew says, and gets a hand on Dick’s cheek, warm and faintly stubbled. Just rubbing his thumb across it makes Dick’s eyelashes flutter, so basically Lew is going to die before anything else even happens, it’s too much.

But he’s damned if he dies before he gets a kiss, so he tips Dick’s face up and brushes their mouths together, once, twice, until Dick’s leaning in, mouth parted and panting.

"Can I?" he asks, pulling back to look again, to make sure he's not dreaming, seeing and feeling and hearing what he wants, rather than what is. What he sees is Dick chasing after his mouth, lunging dazedly forwards, eyes still closed. The whole world, years of it, is rewritten, seeing Dick look like that, for _him_.

Then: “Nix,” Dick says, in that voice. Then, “Lew, please.”

They’re probably going to get arrested, because that is just Lew’s luck, but Lew doesn’t care. He doesn't give one half of a good goddamn, because Dick should have everything he's ever wanted, even if for some godforsaken reason it's Lew. So he drags Dick into his lap, fully on top of him, and gets a hand cupping the back of his head and _really_ kisses him. Kisses him open, and licks inside, drinks down every shocked sound. Dick’s almost tentative to start, clumsy and wet, and Lew wants to go find that guy and shoot him, if that’s how he kissed Richard Winters, who deserves only the best things. Lew keeps at it, mouths Dick’s lower lip, presses small kisses at the corner of his mouth before dipping back in, noses brushing as he deepens it.

“Dick,” he says every time he pulls back to breathe, their mouths still wet and moving together as he speaks. “Jesus, Dick, like that, you like that?”

Dick’s hips are rolling, stuttering a little, and his eyes are so dark.

“Yeah, Lew, I do,” he whispers back.

“Lemme– ” Lew has never been more grateful for bucket seats, for his long-storied history of canoodling in cars, because he’s able to, relatively gracefully, roll them over until he’s got Dick pinned beneath him, and his blown eyes and his tented trousers and rucked up shirt are nearly lethal.

“Jesus, Dick, gonna come in my pants just looking at you,” he groans, and shudders all over, cock twitching, when Dick makes a strangled, desperate sound, hips jerking slightly. “You like that? You want that?”

“I want basically everything I can think of,” Dick grits out, remarkably articulate given the sheen of sweat on his skin and blown-out dark of his eyes, and then Lew shimmies down until he can mouth at Dick's cock through his dove gray trousers, darkening it to near black. The sound Dick makes might even be the Lord's name in vain, which shouldn't be nearly as incandescently hot as it is. Lew is more than willing to go to hell for it.

“Me too, everything, I want it, me too,” Lew rambles, and goes a little stupid getting Dick's nice trousers soaked before he remembers the original goal: getting their belts off, getting everything off. It’s fumbling and takes too long, he’s too shaky and nervous, but Dick’s watching him hungrily, like he’s never seen anything as good as Lew wrestling with his damn belt before finally shoving his trousers down around his knees and somewhere around obsessively kissing a freckled kneecap finds his nerves, and his morals. “Hey, hey, Dick - look. Seriously, I do anything you don’t want or don’t like--”

“Not gonna be a problem,” Dick says, breath ragged. “I haven’t lost Lewis Nixon sex chicken yet,” which is apparently a phrase and a game he picked up from the younger vets that has lingered in ways Lew never _dreamed_. “Everything you do does it for me.”

“Even when I had on the beard, and the false nose?” Lew asks, strangling on affection, and he really is going to come any second now, even if at least now he’s managed to get their trousers semi-off.

“Even covered in piss,” Dick says, and it’s almost tender. Lew’s laughing even as he clutches at the base of his cock, willing it to behave. He never imagined his heart could hold this much, fondness and laughter and incredulity and arousal, and happiness most of all.

“Jesus, Dick, it’s only the first date, give me a few weeks before we try watersports.”

Watersports, he sees Dick start to ask, and he’s laughing, and Lew is going to die from this, and die happy, but he wants Dick to come before he goes, and come well, well enough to remember him by, to be ruined by, so he’s got to hurry.

“Don’t come just yet,” he says, and hears Dick start to say something, but then he’s got his mouth on the clean skin of Dick’s cock, finally, and whatever Dick had tried to say is lost in a broken moan. He could stay here for years, wants to stay until Dick’s come again and again, just keep getting him wet and hard and ready, wants his mouth filthy and swollen with it. Instead he eels back up Dick’s body. Both of them jolt, Dick’s screwed closed eyes flying open when their cocks brush. Lew presses their foreheads together and pants against him, struggling not to just buck himself to completion like a damned green-as-grass high schooler. Then he’s kissing him again, no finesse now. He feels young and stupid, and so, so happy.

“Lew, Lew, oh god,” Dick is moaning into him, and Lew tips his chin up to find his throat. He can feel the pulse kick up under his tongue, and the loud sound that emerges when Lew screws down with his hips and bites down with his teeth at the same time will possibly get them arrested, but he doesn’t care in the slightest. Besides, really, he's got dirt on the commissioner anyways.

He pulls back and watches Dick’s face, watches the way it goes slack and open and shocked as he comes. Mine, he thinks, dazed. This moment, this man, and he finally lets himself come.

“So? Better than pretending, right?” he asks, after he’s finished kissing every inch of skin he can reach and managed to pull away long enough to drag both their trousers off and dispose of the evidence, in case anyone actually did call the cops on them. “I can do better with a little more space and time to work with, but off the cuff I think it was a decent job.”

“Better’s not a big enough word,” Dick says, and pulls him back down for a kiss, this one soft and careful, then he cradles Lew against his chest and sighs, tucking his chin on the top of Lew’s head and his arms around him.

Soon the sun will be up. They’ll have to leave eventually, and get back to work, and maybe even get to a bed somewhere in there. But for now, Lewis feels that him being right here is, for once, not pretending.

For once, just being himself, is more than good enough.


End file.
